I need to know if there is any significance to this? I have a friend, her brother passed away recently and asked to be buried either with his pieces of eight in his right hand or in his right breast pocket. Is there any significance to this? He was a diver.
Thanks for any help you can give me!
“Pieces of eight” are the common name given to Spanish silver and gold coins which were made in the New World between the 15th century and the early 19th century. Many of the ships hauling these coins were sunk, usually by natural disasters(storms, etc.). Finding any of this sunken treasure would naturally be the Holy Grail for any diver.
The coins got their name because they were made with grooves so they could easily be broken into eight pieces for small change, hence ‘two bits’ is a quarter.
That’s unfortunately an urban legend. They were NOT made with grooves. And they could NOT be broken into smaller pieces. The Spanish minted separate denominations of the coins: 8 reales(dollar size, about 27 gms.), 4 reales, 2 reales, 1 real, 1/2 real, and 1/4 real. They made corresponding sizes of gold coins denominated in escudos rather than reales.
It is common in many cultures to bury their dead with some money.
For example, in ancient Greece, they believed that Haros (Death) takes the souls in a boat through river Styx and takes them to the underworld.
If the dead people had no money to pay for the journey, Death would leave them between the two worlds and they would become ghosts or something.
A coin was in the mouth, for this purpose. Charon, the ferryman, took this as his payment for transporting the souls of the dead to Hades. See Aristophanes, Virgil or Dante, but not Homer for more on this practice.
Thank you to everyone who responded, I really appreciate it.